From declan@well.comThu Aug 15 13:07:03 1996
Date: Sat, 10 Aug 1996 21:17:24 -0700 (PDT)
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu
Subject: Face of Net-activism changing -- moving global and to states

The face of net-activism is changing. I'm writing this from a science
fiction writers' and editors' party in upstate New York, where we've been
talking about net-politics and online communities.

The fronts we face now are three: national, state, and international. 
We've fought the national fight in the CDA, Clipper, and recent crypto and
terrorist debates. It's been where most of our efforts have focused. 

State politics lags behind that of Capitol Hill. State legislators are
starting to try to ram through bills similar to the CDA -- and, worse yet,
ones that are substantially different. We've discussed some on
fight-censorship.

The ACLU is the only cyber-liberties group tracking them. Yesterday I
stopped by Ann Beeson's office in Manhattan to talk about the Georgia bill
and other laws the group is planning to challenge. 

(Congratulations are in order. No longer a temporary ACLU fellow, Ann is
now a full-time staff attorney in the national office. It's a
well-deserved promotion!)

Then I walked across Bryant Park to the headquarters of Human Rights
Watch, an international civil rights group. They don't have a substantial
online presence now, but they did publish a fabulous global
net-restrictions report ("Silencing the Net") this spring -- and they have
what the Net needs right now: expertise in dealing with international
groups like G-7 and an extensive network of affiliates around the world. 
They seemed interested in doing more online work, which is wonderful. 

Afterwards Charles Platt and Ann, Glenn and their SOs and I went to dinner
at Sam's Noodle Shop on 29th and chatted about our CDA lawsuit and the
human genome project. 

The two aren't necessarily related, unless you count discerning what
congenital defects DoJ attorney Jason "The Weasel" Baron has. Yes, I'm
hardly unbiased. Anyone who threatens to have me arrested for interviewing
government witnesses is a splendid example of a censorhappy Fed
bureaucrat. As a side note, the weasel has been showing up to more and
more DC cyber-regulation events, like the Freedom Forum's panel on crypto
and censorship, and the FTC's panel on net-regulation and privacy. (Wonder
what he's up to?)

So the growing net-involvement of ACLU and HRW is just in time. They have
the well-established state and international affiliates, respectively,
that other groups lack. Hopefully, the affiliates can forward reports
uphill to the parent groups and help in fighting laws and policies locally. 

We need all the help and international expertise we can get -- as we've
seen recently at the Paris summit, governments have this annoying,
persistent habit of working backroom deals. The G-7 resolution (also
endorsed by Russia) said: 

  We call on all States to:

  6. note the risk of terrorist using electronic or wire communications
       systems and networks to carry out criminal acts and the need to
       find means, consistent with national law, to prevent such
       criminality.

  11. accelerate consultation, in appropriate bilateral or multilateral fora,
       on the use of encryption that allows, when necessary, lawful
       government access to data and communications in order, inter alia,
       to prevent or investigate acts of terrorism, while protecting the
       privacy of legitimate communications.

I've been putting whatever international information I come across at
<http://www.eff.org/~declan/global/>. Check it out for more background.

-Declan